Adam Schultz

I saw this researching my previous post on SNL and the VA Tech Shootings.

The Washington Post and the New York Times are competing with each other with PPC Ads on keywords related to the VA Tech Shooting.

I’m not surprised, yet I am still taken back.

I’m sure this is common practice for media to capitalize on current events but it still urks me.

Then again, here I am blogging about it. I am sharing my feelings but I’m not paying money to get people to read it.

The marketer in me thinks that I would do the same thing if I were them. The human in me thinks it isn’t right to market to tragedy.

What do you think?

Where do you stand?

UPDATE:

As of April 18th at 9:00, The NY Times ad is no longer there. This could be for many reasons. They might have a conscience all of a sudden, they may have run out of $$ or they are only running the ads during certain times of day.

UPDATE-2:

I had a recent conversation with a friend that made me realize that while The Washington Post and The NY Times are bidding on those search terms, they are most likely not even breaking even due to the minimum bids google sets on high volume search terms.

At the end of the day,  It’s Google that has the most to gain.

Does anyone here have a social responsibility not to profit  from the deaths of 33 college students?

Is that evil?